My family and I just got back from a 10 day adventure across Germany, Austria and Poland. Since each of us had our iPhones, my wife and I are iPads, and my daughter her Macbook Air 11″ (the latter needed for homework as college started during the trip), I researched and we signed up for multiple Boingo accounts in order to access Wifi on the trip.
Boingo is a hotspot “aggregator” who apparently partners with providers all over the world. Marketed as a magic “launch app and get connected” service, it does nothing of the sort. Boingo bombed for us and was incredibly frustrating. My wife, daughter and son continually complained that, “Boingo is a total waste!“
The Boingo app itself is flawed: you first have to access a Wifi hotspot (or what Europeans refer to as a “WLAN” hotspot) before you launch the Boingo app! The Boingo app cannot seek out and connect with various hotspot providers. The only place it worked were places where we either already had access (e.g., Marriott hotels; Starbucks) or had already logged in with credentials at the hotspot (e.g., our Sheraton hotel in Krakow, Poland).
But this is what is really bizarre: in order to find other hotspots you had to be connected! It had no internal directory; didn’t have one to download to our iPhones (so we could, for example, download Munich, Berlin, Salzburg and the other places we were visiting); and the app couldn’t be placed in to “seek” mode like others I’ve used on my iPhone to find Wifi hotspots (e.g., JWire) so it was useless for locating places where Boingo could connect. Sheesh.
So what’s the point of having the Boingo service? It’s useful in the USA since we could get on at the airport for no charge. Since my wife is a Delta club member we had free wifi regardless.
The only way this service could be made worthwhile overseas is if:
1) You launched the app (or left it running in the background) and it would notify you of an “approved” Boingo hotspot
2) Performed ALL of the handshaking, credential input and negotiations so launching the Boingo app enabled one to get on instantly.
Otherwise, it’s a waste of time and money.
While I appreciate the challenges a Boingo has with all of the protectionism in Europe (and that countries like Germany, France and Poland ensuring their own, respective mobile and WLAN providers can protect their service revenues) the way Boingo is positioned, marketed and delivered means people like us—ones who’d be lifelong customers if the service worked as advertised—are instead cancelling the service today.
About Steve Borsch
Steve, thanks so much for your frank write-up about Boingo. It’s always helpful when customers provide feedback about their Boingo experience and give us a chance to clarify and improve our service.
From a developer standpoint, we’re as frustrated as you are about the Boingo app experience on Apple iOS devices. We agree it’s not optimal and have requested access to the necessary iOS interfaces that would allow us to improve the experience. At this time, Apple has not yet granted developer access to the Wi-Fi layer on iOS devices. It’s not that we don’t know how to engineer an improved connectivity experience, but rather that if we did, we would be removed from the App Store for violating developer rules.
Our vision, similar to yours, was that the Boingo app for iOS would behave the way it does today on Android, PC and Mac platforms, i.e., most notably, free and Boingo hotspot alerts and one-click access from within the app. Here’s a link to our blog post with a summary of our app’s functionality: http://www.boingo.com/blog/2011/03/introducing-the-boingo-wi-finder-app. As we point out in that post, the app’s behavior on iOS is different. We point mobile Apple users to another post, which provides tips for connecting on iOS: http://www.boingo.com/blog/2011/03/tips-for-using-boingo-wi-finder-on-apple-ios-devices. To clarify, manually selecting the SSID on iOS devices is required only once per roaming operator. After the first connection to a partner hotspot, the app will automatically associate to that SSID at any location in that partner’s network.
We definitely hear your frustration about needing an Internet connection in order to find a hotspot. We’ve been in this conundrum ourselves. What would be your recommendation for a workaround? We’re open to any and all ideas. The limitation we face is similar to what you would encounter if you were trying to use Google maps on your offline Apple device: mapping doesn’t work without an Internet connection. One solution is to research hotspots in advance via our Location Directory (http://boingo.jiwire.com) or the app’s map. Additionally, some customers have told us that anytime they have a connection, they search the app for locations and take a screenshot for offline viewing.
Since you clearly have great ideas, we’d be thrilled if you continue providing feedback. Would you be open to two months of Wi-Fi service – on us? If you’re interested, let me know and we’ll set you up with a free account.
If there’s anything more we can do to help, please don’t hesitate to let us know!
Warm Regards,
Lauren Sanyal
Appreciate your reply Lauren.
While I often wonder about iOS restrictions from Apple, I also understand the security implications of deeper integrations (and ones Apple cannot control). This is why after my first jailbreak on a 3GS, I rolled back and now only use Apple updates. It’s just not worth the risk.
With respect to you saying, “SSID on iOS devices is required only once per roaming operator” I’d have to beg to differ. That was NOT my experience with, ironically, the one provider you point out in that blog post: BTOpenZone. While I successfully connected to them once in a Starbucks in Berlin, subsequent attempts failed (and besides, why should I have to seek out blog posts and your videos to figure out how to use your app!?! Shouldn’t you send me an email with a “care package” of stuff I should know about?).
What REALLY got me steamed while trying to use Boingo in Europe, however, was the ubiquitous footprint of TMobile Hotspots, Deutsche Telekom’s network. BTOpenZone and AT&T were “partner options” but required logins whenever the SSID was selected and, of course, Boingo Hotspot wasn’t an option. As a consequence, none of us were ever able to connect successfully via TMobile.
“We definitely hear your frustration about needing an Internet connection in order to find a hotspot. We’ve been in this conundrum ourselves. What would be your recommendation for a workaround?”
As someone who has frequently placed a Macbook in to wireless discovery mode with tools like iStumbler (so I could find open hotspots in a pinch) there is no question that you could leverage the knowledge of tools like it.
Have your product managers buy WiFiFoFum, a fabulous iOS discovery tool that I use even when my iPhone is in Airplane Mode. It can scan for hotspots, you can set the scan frequency, show infrastructure, adhoc or secure hotspots only, and so on. I must admit being stunned that Boingo WiFinder couldn’t hold a candle to this $2.99 app and that realization only added to my profound disappointment using Boingo.
You also mention “one solution” being to research hotspots in advance using your connection to jwire. NO…this does NOT work for me (or my wife and adult children) since we ALL expect that the provider will look at the process, all of the steps necessary to accomplish a connection, and DO THE HARD WORK FOR US.
The whole point of having a mobile device is to use it while you’re mobile. Not to stop and fiddle for God knows how long to get connected. About a dozen times on our trip I needed to check email and couldn’t since it required WAY too much time to figure out if I could get connected (and mostly could not). I also stopped at McDonalds, Starbucks and other U.S. chain stores thinking Boingo would AT LEAST have them nailed down abroad. Never was an option.
Appreciate the offer of the free couple of months. The only thing is this: I don’t need it in the U.S. and won’t be traveling for several months. I have access at McDonalds, Starbucks and a host of other venues and, frankly, Boingo does well in the U.S. It’s overseas that’s the issue so don’t know how I can help.
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To finish up, look at the steps one has to take when getting connected with Boingo. What was our expectation?
1) That we would open the Boingo WiFinder and *it* would tell us if the hotspot we were in was a Boingo Hotspot and then do all the work of handshaking with the hotspot. NOT first having to connect to the SSID ourselves, figure out how to login by entering our email or agreeing to their Ts & Cs, and crap like that
2) If we were NOT in a Boingo Hotspot, we could launch WiFinder in a city and it would turn in to discovery mode and let us navigate toward a hotspot that’s “approved”. Yes, I understand the limitations of the strength of a Wifi signal, but this seems like a no-brainer
3) Give me the choice of placing WiFinder in to “seek” mode so it can discover Boingo Hotspots. While I understand that this will burn up battery life, so does the app “Nike + GPS” but I use it on my walks and runs. It sucks battery but it’s my decision to use it in a manner that keeps it running and connected to GPS. That’s why I have a Mophie juice pack.
Hope this helps.
It helps a lot! Thanks again for sharing more details about your experience. We definitely hear your frustration and will continue improving on our service.
To clarify, many operators list the same SSID for all of their locations, which may not be the case for BT Openzone. So, you only need to manually select the signal you wish to connect to once per SSID name. Do you know the precise locations in which you received errors? This will help us uncover what happened and improve the experience in these hotspots.
When we design our products, we try to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, ask ourselves what features we’d want, make it as easy as possible to use, and include helpful information about how to use the service. Sometimes, we find that we haven’t answered 100% of the questions that customers ask us, so we try to post videos and blog posts that help answer these questions.
We totally hear what you’re saying about the iOS app’s inability to discover hotspots, and we’ll definitely continue to work with Apple on adding the features our other platforms currently enjoy!
Let us know the next time you plan to travel overseas, and we’ll set you up with your gratis account then, no problem.
Thanks again for reaching out to us. We really appreciate your candid comments and suggestions, and we’ll also send them along to our Product Team.
Warm Regards,
Lauren Sanyal